Technical Field
The present application relates to a method for charging fees for location usages of on-board units in a road toll system.
Background Art
Location usages by vehicles are determined in electronic road toll systems with the aid of on-board units (OBUs) carried in the vehicles, which for this purpose communicate either via dedicated short range communication (DSRC) with geographically distributed radio beacons (DSRC beacons), or with the aid of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) OBUs, which are self-locating in a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Whereas in DSRC systems the beacons are directly connected to the toll control centre, GNSS OBUs transmit the determined data to the central toll server generally via mobile radio.
In road toll systems of this type, the fees are charged, for example in accordance with US 2005/010478 A1, usually by pre-payment of a sum of money, which may additionally include a security deposit for the on-board unit. When an on-board unit is returned, for example at the toll terminal of a decentralised point of sales before crossing a border, the toll server calculates the sums of money paid up to that point and the credit used. Waiting times and undesirable cash reserves or complicated (international) bank transfers at the respective point of sales are associated with this approach.
In order improve the high effort and low flexibility of such a method for charging fees, a method was disclosed in European Patent Application No. EP 2 511 868, in which payment cards, for example credit cards, are used to determine, pay for, adjust payment of, and charge transaction values. In this method, the road toll system and payment transaction system cooperate without mutual integration, with the result that an inclusion of the road toll system into the highly elaborate secured processes of the payment card transactions and an associated certification of the road toll system for observance of fixed standards, for example of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), are avoided.
In the known method, a direct data connection between the toll terminal and the transaction terminal at a point of sales (POS) and a further direct data connection between the toll server and transaction server are created in order to allow the two systems to cooperate. A payment transaction is therefore determined at the POS, and, with successful payment processing, a confirmation message is forwarded from the transaction terminal to the toll terminal and from there is transmitted together with an identification, detected there, of the on-board unit to the toll server. The toll server additionally receives via the further direct data connection together with the same confirmation message from the transaction server, a substitute identification generated there. With the aid of the confirmation message received equally by the toll terminal and by the transaction server, the toll server can associate the substitute identification and on-board unit identification with one another. Fees for location usages determined in the road toll system on the basis of the on-board unit identification are charged later via the direct data communication between the toll server and transaction server under the substitute identification.